Another Robot Wants to Do Your Laundry—This Time It's Figure 02
People apparently really don't like doing laundry, and they really don't like folding said laundry. Case in point: Yet another robot is promising to take on the dreaded task. Last year, I wrote about Physical Intelligence's π0 robot (Pi Zero) that's able to unload a dryer, fold laundry, and clean a messy table. And now, Figure's latest humanoid robot is throwing its hat into the ring.
Figure's CEO Brett Adcock recently posted the video proof on Twitter showing the Figure 02 robot slightly bent down in his laundry room, picking up a small hamper and pulling out clothes one by one to load into his front-facing washing machine. At one point, Adcock asks one of his kids—who appears briefly in the background—to toss in another item, demonstrating that Figure 02 doesn't miss a beat and keeps loading clothes like nothing happened.
What surprised me (though I don't even know why I'm still surprised at this point) is how meticulous the robot is. It makes sure each piece of clothing is fully inside the machine before moving on—no part is left dangling over the edge.
Adcock makes a remark in the video to his two kids, saying, "Hopefully, we won't ever have to do laundry again—what do you guys think?" to which the kids reply with...silence. My guess, based on their estimated ages of 4 to 6, is that they either don't understand what's happening or they're just wholly unimpressed. I thought it was funny, though, that you hear one of his kids in the video just humming a tune while this is all going down, like this is just another Tuesday. And maybe with a dad who's the CEO of a robotics company, it is.
The video cuts off before the task is finished. We don't get to see the robot close the washing machine door, put the detergent/pod in, or start the cycle. I searched to see if there was maybe another video posted that showed the rest of this task in action, but I didn't find anything.
Even without seeing the robot complete the task, I feel confident in saying it could finish the job. I've covered Figure's robots and technology before, including a recent demo showing its robots working together to put away groceries. While the pace is a bit slow for my liking, what stood out to me was the shared spatial awareness—one robot grabs the "wrong" item, and the other simply pivots, grabs a different one, and keeps going.
In my opinion, I still find humanoid robots a bit slow, though I don't have any hard data comparing task speed between them and human workers. That said, robots don't get distracted, don't zone out, and likely don't drop things. So maybe throughout an 8-hour shift, a robot might come out ahead, but I don't believe it would be by a wide margin. Not yet, anyway.
Figure 02's laundry skills are powered in part by the company's recent Vision-Language-Action (VLA) AI model breakthrough, Helix. Helix allows humanoid robots to navigate complex, unstructured environments and perform dexterous tasks with better speed and adaptability.
Adcock says having the robot in his home is part of a trial phase to see how it performs with household chores. Figure 02 is already being tested in industrial settings across the U.S., but he hopes to deploy Figure 02 for household chores in the future.
It's clear to me that having robots do household chores and such is more about publicity, along with showing off robots' dexterity, adaptiveness, flexibility, etc. If it can fold laundry, which is a fairly intricate task, it could do a lot of other intricate tasks similarly in critical environments. Plus, not every robotics researcher has access to industrial facilities. Everyday household tasks offer the ability for practical test cases.
Still, I keep thinking about Adcock's kids in the video and wondering what the hell they think about this robot in their home. Are they terrified? Unsettled? Indifferent? What must it be like to be that age and have this human-looking machine walking around your house, or alternatively, standing still in a corner waiting to be used? Which is something I've never thought about when it comes to having robots in the home, especially humanoid ones: That they will need to just sit or stand somewhere until you want to use them. A Roomba is one thing...a humanoid robot is another.
